Kim Ransdell: John 6:35-40, 11:25-26
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Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Kim was ready to meet her Savior. You heard from Jodie how she wanted to run, not walk into His arms. But she also made it perfectly clear to me and to the family that she wanted her passing to point others to the same Savior that she knew. She wanted you to know Him. To know the true LIFE that only comes from knowing Life Himself.
We’re going to look at a couple of passages from the New Testament, from the life of Jesus. Earlier, you heard Tiffany read those words from John chapter 6, and I encourage you to turn with me in the PEW BIBLES to that passage, on page <<PAGE #>>. This is the source of Kim’s joy and hope. <<READ 6:35-40>>
I’d like to give you four observations taken from this passage, beginning with this:
FIRST, Jesus said, “I AM the bread of life” (v35)
FIRST, Jesus said, “I AM the bread of life” (v35)
There is only one life-giver.
“I AM” a statement in itself (cf. John 14:6, nature of I AM statements)
Declaring that in him, all God’s promises in the Old Testament that He would send a Messiah, a Savior, a Christ, to rescue his people from their sin & death, fulfilled in Jesus
- Jesus declaring that He is God, the one who made the heavens and the earth, the source of life and life itself.
I AM the bread of life - the one who gives and sustains life. Like the manna given by God to the Israelites in the desert as they passed from Egypt to the Promised Land, Jesus is the only One who can take us through the wilderness of this life into the presence of God.
Another “I AM” statement, John 11:25-26 -
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Jesus was loved by this family, Martha, Mary, and their brother Lazarus. When Lazarus fell sick, Jesus came to Bethany four days after his death
Martha ran out to Jesus on the road. “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” she said. Mary and the Jewish mourners all said something to the same effect. Jesus had a reputation - he could heal the blind, he could heal the sick, if he’d made it four days earlier, he could have healed Lazarus.
In verse 21, “Even now,” Martha said, “I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
Jesus’s response to Martha, “Your brother will rise again,” If it was anyone but Jesus saying it, it could have been taken like a cliche funeral phrase, like the 1st century Jewish equivalent of “He’s in a better place.” The kind of thing we say when everyone is hurting and nobody knows what to say.
Martha’s response, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” For Martha, it was a vague, distant hope that didn’t help her much in her grief.
When death comes close but your idea of God is far away, not much comfort
Vague, wishful-thinking spirituality is like that. But Jesus had more to say.
In John 11:25-26, Jesus confronts wishful-thinking religion and transforms Martha’s entire understanding of life, and death, and the afterlife. Death has become personal for her, and now, in Jesus, life & resurrection will become even more near, more personal, more real for her.
“Resurrection” - future, judgment, eternity, afterlife, not a vague notion but a person
“Bread” - present, day-by-day, not distant but near
APPLY: Faced with the reality of death, a hundred ways we could go - denial, avoidance, obsession, despair. Only this answer: “I AM the bread of life, I AM the resurrection and the life” answers the personal reality of death with an even more personal answer from a personal savior. Only the great I AM, God himself, the creator of all life, could be the resurrection, the source of future hope, when all other hopes have gone.
Kim knew Jesus. She was nourished by the Bread of Life, she met the Resurrection years before she died, and so she could face death without fear. Can you?
SECOND, Jesus said, “everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him will have eternal life” (v37, v40)
SECOND, Jesus said, “everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him will have eternal life” (v37, v40)
THIS IS Promise: Hope not for a vague afterlife, but the promise of a future in HIM, a hope as tangible as Jesus
Death jars us with the realization that we are in desperate trouble. We’re all born into a beautiful, but broken, world. Death reminds us of the brokenness. In fact, death is the quintessential and defining aspect of the world’s brokenness. That’s just how God said it would be. No matter what we tell ourselves, when death comes close enough to touch, we long for there to be another answer, another way. We realize that it’s not just a natural part of life. It’s not meant to be this way. But no matter how much we change our diet, or start exercising, or deny, deny, deny, our best plans can’t stop the clock.
It’s the tragic outworking of our alienation from LIFE - because God - He is LIFE, and every one of us has walked away from Him.
All our decisions to walk apart from God, every time we’ve chosen the easy way over the right way, every time we’ve glorified ourselves rather than God, every unholy or immoral thought, word, or deed, make up what the Bible calls “sin.” Sin is the reason we are so far from God and can’t seem to get back. We can’t.
We can’t even fix the brokenness in our relationships with each other - how could we fix our alienation from God?
And death is the final curtain that seals our alienation forever.
But Jesus is the Bread of Life, the Resurrection and the Life. The great I AM. And into our brokenness, He breaks through like dawn in a mountain pass, piercing death with life.
Truly God and truly man, both Lord and Messiah, he lived and died as one of us, yet without sin, without alienation from God. He fulfilled what we have all broken, and suffered a substitutionary death in payment for all the sins of those who believe. And just as darkness cannot stop the light from shining, death could not hold the Resurrection and the Life. Jesus rose in victory over death on the third day so that you and I could share in the same resurrection and life that He offered to Martha that day.
THIRD, Jesus said, “and I will raise him up on the last day.” (v37, v40, John 11:25-26)
THIRD, Jesus said, “and I will raise him up on the last day.” (v37, v40, John 11:25-26)
For those who live, promise that life after death is not temporary, cannot be lost
Two tiny words in verse 37 <<READ>>: I WILL ; in v40 <<READ>>: I WILL - promises
Never cast out - He will not lose, discard, abandon, forsake. He will not change his mind. He will never cast out
Raise him up == Resurrection - promise not of vague afterlife, but concrete promise of resurrection. The Bible is the only place you can find the promise of resurrection in all the world. Kim will dance in the presence of Jesus for eternity. Not harps and wings and clouds. Feet on the glorious shores of the River of Life, in the garden city that the Old and New Testaments call the New Jerusalem, in the New Heavens and New Earth.
Two more tiny words in v40 <<READ>> - IN HIM - And in John 11:25-26 <<READ>> IN ME
Belief and life in Jesus are like climbing into the Ark when the floods of death surround you.
Every day of our lives, the flood waters get just a little higher, and we don’t know how long we’ve got, but Jesus says, “Enter this refuge, and I’ll take you through. Through death, and you’ll have life. And the eternal death of God’s judgment for sin will never be upon you, because I’ve weathered that storm for you.”
Kim entered that refuge - she put her life in the hands of the author of life - and faced death knowing not some vague notion of an afterlife that might or might not be, but the certainty of resurrection in Jesus. Why do I say “certainty?” For that, I turn to my fourth and final observation of Jesus’ words here:
FOURTH: John 11:25-26 - “Do you believe this?”
FOURTH: John 11:25-26 - “Do you believe this?”
When Jesus spoke these words, he invited Martha into the refuge that would take her safely through the storm of death. To enter into life by faith. Her next words begin, “Yes, Lord, I believe.”
Emphatic, words of poised confidence. Martha was not taking a leap in the dark - Jesus was right in front of her.
Earlier in their conversation, Martha had stated twice what she knew - she knew God would give Jesus whatever he asked, and she knew her brother would rise at the last day. But that knowledge wasn’t enough. Having a vague commitment to a belief in an afterlife was nothing compared to meeting Life Himself on the road, and the promise of resurrection - eternal reconciliation to God and life in Him. So, faced with death, she ran to Jesus. And now, the question is for you to answer:
Kim Ransdell passed through death to eternal life because she first met Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, when she said, “Yes, Lord, I believe.”
It was her hope that you would hear Jesus’ question and answer: “Do you believe?”
There is no other source of life than Him. And this is no idle speculation. You can search the world and all the religions and philosophies of the world, and you will find no other name under heaven whereby people are rescued from sin and death by God Himself in love.
There’s a foretaste of our own Resurrection a few verses later in John 11. Jesus calls to Lazarus, and he comes forth from the tomb. But when Jesus shows up at a funeral, he’s there to wake more than the one in the tomb. He calls to you, today, as he called to Martha. “I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe?”
Jesus goes to funerals to wake the dead.
To call you back to Him. To call you back to life. No matter how far you’ve run, no matter how far you are from God, if you hear His voice today, saying, “I am the resurrection and the life,” His words are for you. Come out, he says, and live.